Strasbourg

Trailing back, smitten through the small hours,
I thought of Anna’s bedhead languor
unchanged these many years,

her unreformed Romanticism
of the first wave – ein Uber-Kunst,
the All in One, the One in All ! –

her Decadence of the last,
draped women, green fairy, industrial smoke
from a Rimbaud pipe –

of her delectable heart-shaped lostness,
« What then is my Destiny ? », and
« I thought the Germans not much fun,

but then I came to live in France ! »

her Russian Blue with beer-green eyes
buzzed and stared me out : Allez, debout !
She broached a terminal, corrosive Quetsch.

Trailing back, I looked into the Ille and saw
in their folded necks
an emblem out of Gutenberg,

the symbol of infinity, come apart,
the helix, about to close,

two sweet sleepers, treading water.